


Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit

by rexluscus



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF
Genre: Anachronism, Boy actors in erotic situations, Canonical Character Death, Cuckold jokes, Dutch stereotypes, Ephebophilia, Espionage, Fuzzy London geography, Homophobic Language, Jonsonian comedy tropes, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Misogyny, Sexism, Theatrical crossdressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus/pseuds/rexluscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New to London and the theatrical life, Will is Marlowe's biggest fan. But that might only be because he's never <i>met</i> him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you won't look for signs of rigorous scholarship in this story. I trotted out all the biographical clichés (including the "William Hughes" theory about the identity of "Mr. W. H."), played with anachronism, and generally made shit up. Hopefully the old excuse "because fanfiction" will save me.
> 
> Thank you so much to Aubrem, Schemingreader, Concertigrossi and The Kinky Pet for beta-reading and input.

In the year of our Lord 1589, at the advanced age of twenty-five, Will set out from Stratford, leaving behind three small children, an equal number of pleasant memories and quiet disappointments, and a wife who didn't like him. He arrived in London hungry, exhausted, and almost broke. Naturally, the first thing he did was go to the theater.

Admission cost a penny. Once through the door, he began to doubt his plan of simply walking up to the stage and shouting, "I'd like to join your company, please!" but he knew of no other way to go about it. _When_ to make his move, though—that was the trouble. He supposed he ought to hear the play first. 

The audience made a terrific ruckus and he only caught one word in five, but he gathered that it was a chronicle play, about Persians or somesuch. A king in an Oriental costume came on stage, beset by scheming advisors. They were followed by a great lady in the habit of Egypt or Carthage, and with her a sort of noble bandit, dressed as a shepherd but declaiming like a king. He was in the act of taking the lady captive, it seemed, yet he was obviously trying to impress her, strutting and speechifying and threatening every so often to conquer Asia. The young boy playing the lady batted his eyelashes to show that she had already fallen in love with her rapist, and soon the bandit had declared his own love as well, promising her the riches of the Orient.

The crowd calmed itself, mesmerized by the fellow presenting the bandit, who was nearly six feet tall and had a voice as clear and commanding as any church bell. In the hush, his words reached out, no longer vying with the ambient sound, and made their way into Will's ears.

Will listened, unable to move or even think. He'd never _heard_ words like this, not in any theater or pulpit—not from any English-speaking tongue.

_"I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains,_  
 _And with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about,_  
 _And sooner shall the sun fall from his sphere,_  
 _Than Tamburlaine be slain or overcome."_

It sounded so simple. There was nothing artful about the syntax, no interesting vocabulary, not even any adjectives. The words were just as a man would speak them. And yet they echoed like the footsteps of a god on the underside of the firmament.

Somewhere in the middle of the second act, it dawned on Will that the audacious bandit was not the villain of this play. He was not even the tragic hero. He was the hero, period, and he wasn't going to be struck down at the end for daring to attempt heaven. He was going to win. 

Throughout the play, a man standing to Will's left watched him furtively. As a musical interlude started up, the man finally said, "You've not seen this one before?"

"I'm new in town," Will replied, giving his neighbor a show of disinterest.

The man smiled with irritating complacency. "Nothing like your first _Tamburlaine_. I remember when it first came out. All those glorious iambs! I've never been so aroused by a poetic meter…"

"Do you, er, write?" asked Will.

The smile grew wider and more pleased. "Oh, you know—a bit. Name's Kyd. Wrote a little trifle, perhaps you've heard of it— _The Spanish Tragedy?_ "

"Can't say that I have," said Will, feeling glad of it.

Kyd's smile vanished. "Really?" He clutched his head and fixed Will with a mad stare. _"Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears! Oh life, no life, but lively form of death!"_ He cocked his head. "Nothing?"

"Sorry." Will shook his head. "Sounds good, though," he said truthfully.

Kyd sighed. "Well, you just arrived in town—can't expect you to have seen _all_ the big tickets yet. Be sure to head over to the Curtain when you get a chance—"

The music ended and the actors reappeared. "I'm sorry," said Will, "but I'd like to hear this scene, if you don't mind."

"Ah yes!" In an instant, Kyd traded his self-promotion for fannish glee. "This next bit's _really_ good."

As it turned out, Tamburlaine did win. He wasn't felled by a thunderbolt, or dragged to Hell by the ghosts of the slain, or murdered by his brother. Instead, he declared himself the king of Persia, crowned the beauteous Zenocrate his queen, and gave her a pile of dead heathen kings as a wedding present. At the sight of her new husband's handiwork, the sweet-faced boy playing Zenocrate wore a bloodthirsty smile of frank erotic promise far beyond what a child of his age ought to have been able to imagine, let alone perform. It left Will feeling lightheaded.

Back in Stratford, Will had made some modest attempts at writing. One of the plays he'd started, a sort of Plautine comedy, he was especially proud of. Next to _Tamburlaine_ , it seemed a trivial waste of time. Even the most serious plays he'd seen, the great Corpus Christi pageant plays, felt awkward and artificial in comparison. The god whose footsteps he'd heard in Tamburlaine's voice was not a Christian god, nor any god he knew of. 

As the audience dispersed, Will remembered his purpose. Although getting hired as a player seemed so terribly unambitious to him now—who would not prefer instead to be a _writer?_ —his growling stomach reminded him that writing a play took longer than he could go without eating. He pushed his way upstream to the stage and got the attention of a boy scrubbing the Turkish Emperor's blood off the planks. 

"I'm wondering if you could use another actor!" he called. The boy gaped at him stupidly. "I've got experience!" he added. 

An arm clapped around his shoulders, and he turned to see the face of Mr. Kyd. "Don't bother with the Admiral's Men," said Kyd.

"But—" said Will. He wanted to work for the company whose actors got to speak such mighty lines as Tamburlaine's.

"They've all the players they want," said Kyd, leading him away. "And writers, too. You haven't much need of anyone else," he added bitterly, "when Marlowe's on your payroll."

 

Will had missed his chance to act in Marlowe's plays. But Marlowe himself was ubiquitous. The theater crowd lived cheek by jowl in Shoreditch, and even though Will steered clear of the drinking and the raising of hell, he heard the stories about Marlowe—mostly from Kyd—of tavern brawls and duels in the streets, of outrageous scenes of sexual and religious depravity. And he'd seen the man himself in his velvet doublet, blowing his nose on a bailiff's sleeve and getting away with it. Between all the things Marlowe was said to do—goading apprentices to riot near the Inns of Court, reciting Ovid in the buff at Bishopsgate, insulting the Virgin Mary in the aisles of St. Paul's—it was a wonder he had time to write plays. With dozens of parts to learn and his own plays to finish, Will himself rarely had time for a decent night's sleep.

He longed for a real encounter with the man, but he dreaded one as well. What words would the learned, atheistical Marlowe have for one such as Will? The closest he got was at the end of a rowdy night after a reading of Marlowe's new play by the Admiral's Men. It had been full of blasphemies and holy terrors, and although the demonic Doctor Faustus received his punishment in the end, he'd breathed into Will a spirit of rebellion—enough that when Will tripped over a discarded bundle as he'd attempted to leave the tavern, he shouted "By God's wounds!" at the top of his lungs.

"Really?" sneered the bundle, which was in fact a man. " _By God's wounds?_ That's the best you can do for blasphemy?" The man—the very guest of honor whose play they'd all just heard read aloud—reached for a nearby cup and drained it. "I'll give you God's wounds—the gap between a woman's legs. There's more of God in a whore's cunt than there is in Christ's bloody wounds…" And with that, Marlowe slumped into an insensate heap.

 

Late in the summer of 1591, as Will struggled through the long saggy middle of _The Third Part of Henry the Sixth_ , an extraordinarily beautiful boy of about fifteen or sixteen knocked on the door of his rooms with a note in hand.

Will read it with alarm and anger. "You can't be serious," he said, handing the note back.

"Mr. Kempe and Mr. Burbage think my master will make a better go of it," said the boy with an apologetic shrug. "He does have a bit of experience with chronicle plays."

Will knew that very well. He'd started _Henry the Sixth_ to imitate Marlowe, after all, and to exceed him—to show everyone that he could outdo the very best. 

Will slouched in his chair and groaned. Then he squinted at the boy. "Have I seen you before?" he asked.

The boy grabbed a burlap cloth at the foot of Will's bed and fashioned it into an Egyptian headdress. "Does that help?"

"Ah!" Will slapped his knee. "Of course!" he said, staring into the face of Tamburlaine's lady-love. "Might I ask your name?"

"Willy Hughes, sir."

"And you're Marlowe's man?"

"When I'm not acting in the plays, sir."

Will noticed the blond fuzz on the boy's chin. "You'll be a bit old for the women's parts soon."

"Oh, it's nothing a close shave and a good falsetto can't take care of, sir. I hope I have a few years left in me."

Will cocked his head. The current crop of boy actors with the Queen's Men left a great deal to be desired, but this one… "Do you read?" he asked. "How well do you memorize?"

"Tolerably well, sir. I played ten parts last week, though that's a bit busy even for me. And one or two of 'em was by cue. Without prompting, I reckon I've got a good twenty parts ready to hand this very second."

Will studied the boy's large, fine blue eyes and golden curls. He'd make as good a Valentine or Proteus as he would a Silvia or Julia, certainly. Suddenly, Will could think of all _sorts_ of roles for this boy to play. Inspiration struck him. "Could you take me to your master?" he asked, gathering up his manuscript.

 

They found Marlowe having supper alone at the White Hart, eating with one hand and writing with the other. 

"Forgive me for interrupting you," said Will, slipping into the seat across from him.

Marlowe looked up. "You're Will Shaxbeard, aren't you."

"It's Shax _pear_ , actually. Without the 'd'."

"Shaxbeard. Shagsbeard. Heheh." Marlowe picked his teeth. "Will shags beard. Will shag beards."

 _This_ was immortal Tamburlaine's creator? He wasn't even drunk this time. Will sighed. Never meet your idols face to face, he thought.

"I saw your new play at the Rose," he said instead, not caring to return Marlowe's glazed stare for too long. "Really thunderous stuff."

"Aye." Marlowe sniffed. "Literally. Thunder, lightning, fat angels dangling from cranes, devils running about farting smoke—a bunch of bloody nonsense. All I asked for was a poor benighted beggar on his knees, unable to do a thing as simple as forcing his hands together to pray. Instead, they gave me a clown consumed by stage machinery."

This surprised Will. Somehow he'd thought Marlowe would be the first to call for more fireworks and flying angels. "So the, um, mouth of Hell opening up—that wasn't your idea?"

"You're bloody right it wasn't. Who'd fear Hell if they could _see_ it?"

Will thought he might. It depended on what Hell looked like. "Maybe not _that_ Hell," he conceded. He remembered his errand. "Look, Mr. Marlowe—I have a proposition for you."

"About that play Lord Strange's Men want me to take off your hands." Marlowe nodded at the manuscript under Will's arm. "That it?"

"Maybe." Will clutched it closer. "I'll turn it over to you on one condition: that you lend me your man here for a role in my new play with the Queen's Men."

Marlowe laughed riotously. "He _is_ a peach, isn't he?" Marlowe glanced over at Willy, who was standing silently to one side. "But you don't have a choice about the manuscript, as I see it."

"I do if I refuse to give it to you," said Will.

Marlowe's eyes narrowed. "Think you can keep me from taking it?"

"I can certainly try."

As they stared at each other, Will's heart began to pound. This was the man who'd beaten his tailor in the street for charging him an extra shilling. Whereas Will had never won a fight in his life.

Marlowe's hearty laugh ended the standoff. "What sort of play do you want Willy for? Another one of your asinine comedies?"

Will bristled. "Might be," he said stiffly.

Marlowe raked him up and down with a searching gaze. "I saw a comedy of yours not long ago." 

"And?"

A shrug. "Cute. Very…unified. Honestly, though— _two_ sets of identical twins? You've got gifts, man, and _that's_ what you do with them?"

"Comedy sells," said Will, then bit his lip. Was that truly his only defense?

"Tragedy sells better." Marlowe draped his leg over the arm of his chair. "Have you noticed that our main competition is bear-baitings and public executions? People love watching things suffer."

"I'd rather not encourage that," said Will primly.

Marlowe laughed again, snorting. "Oh please. Mark my words—before the year is up, you'll write some gorefest with more rape, murder, cannibalism, dismemberment and rape than all my plays put together. I can see it in your eyes." He winked. "It's what attracts me to you, frankly."

Will cleared his throat. Kyd had warned him about this.

A smile was spreading slowly across Marlowe's face. "All right, Shags. I'll do these two favors you ask—I'll lend you Willy, and I'll rescue your ailing chronicle play. As long as you do something for me: you must come out drinking with me tonight."

"Wait—so stealing my play is doing _me_ a favor now?"

Marlowe had gathered his writing implements, and now he sprang out of his chair. "That's right—and it's all yours for a single night out with me! Hey, Shags, are you married?" He grinned. "Or do you only shag beards?"

Will didn't want to confess that his marriage contained very little shagging these days, so he settled for saying, "Oh, I'll shag just about anything."

"Excellent. Willy, go tell the boys on New Fish Street we're on our way!"

All over North London, Marlowe was a prince. Doors opened for him; chairs were vacated for him; ale appeared on the table for his delectation without his having to ask for it. Will recognized a few faces among the theater men they joined at the Sun tavern, but he'd never drunk with any of them—given that he didn't really drink with _anyone_. Most were writers, and a few were Marlowe's Cambridge cronies, which made him all the more anxious that he'd be exposed as an uneducated hack. 

"Greene, Chettle, Peele, you there whose name I can't remember—this is Will Shagsbeard. He's going to be the greatest writer of chronicle plays besides myself in a short while." Will nodded courteously to Marlowe's friends and waited for the attention to shift away from him. But Marlowe just said, "Now everyone leave me alone and show Shags a good time. I've got work to do."

So rather than passing the evening safely in silent observation, Will found himself at the center of things while Marlowe sat in the corner with Will's manuscript spread out in front of him. Will answered his new friends' questions in a polite, informative manner—until it became clear that he was expected to be entertaining, not merely informative, which forced him to dig into his store of anecdotes. Will hadn't lived an exciting life (yet), but he'd _met_ a lot of exciting people, and he had an uncanny memory for verbal details. He turned the conversation he'd overheard between an orange-seller and an Italian glassblower into a tiny masterpiece of fish-out-of-water comedy. He blew up some harmless political gossip he'd intercepted at St. Paul's into a scandal. He even made up a story about Marlowe, just to see if the man was paying attention. 

"Hardy har," said Marlowe without looking up. He inserted a clean page into Will's manuscript and began to fill it as his friends roared with laughter. Will noticed, at least, that he was smiling.

After that (and with the help of more drinks) Will relaxed, let go of his fear that they would think him a hayseed or an amateur, and began to have fun. He swelled with pride whenever one of his stories got a big laugh. Even Willy, lolling at his master's side, found Will amusing, and Will particularly liked making _him_ laugh. Marlowe ignored them all, scribbling furiously and drinking steadily in his corner, apparently satisfied that the party was flourishing without him.

At some point, Will turned a corner from mildly drunk into an intoxicated state of grace in which pain wasn't real and every moment glowed with beautiful fatedness. His new friends loved him—Will could see it shining in their faces. Indeed, he loved them too. And lest he think this was merely the drink talking, Willy came and sat across his lap as a visible sign of his election. He told his best story of the night, about a female bear and a Lincoln's Inn lawyer, to riotous applause, and afterwards, Willy took his face in his hands and kissed him on the mouth, still laughing. 

Will had received kisses before, very nice ones even, but never one that came to him like a little gift from the universe, unlooked-for yet perfectly on time, like the closing couplet of a sonnet. He stroked Willy's cheek and kissed his soft lips until the boy pulled away. Over Willy's shoulder, he saw Marlowe watch them with a smile before returning to his manuscript.

The party broke up around three o'clock, and Will followed Marlowe and Willy down High Street going south, ducking into alleys to avoid the watch, and stifling their giggles as best they could. When they ran out of street at the Thames, Marlowe set himself up on an empty quay with his arse on a straw bale and his manuscript and inkwell on a barrel-head. He sent Willy off for more liquor, and invited Will to stretch out on his back and watch the moon make its way down toward Southwark as the drink in his belly ran its course. Will's head was spinning by now and he lay down with relief, letting the brightly lit heavens rotate slowly past his closed eyelids. Marlowe, for his part, seemed hardly touched by his liquor at all, writing with as steady a hand as ever while the moon dropped lower in the sky.

When Willy returned with a bottle, the three of them shared a pipeful of Marlowe's tobacco, and then Marlowe got back to drinking and writing. Shivering with happiness, Will got to his feet and held Willy in his arms, though he dared not try anything more. The boy endured it happily enough, and after a few minutes, it became less of a passionate embrace and more of a mutual bid for warmth. Resting his chin on Willy's curly head, Will watched the sky above the Tower of London turn pale. 

Just as the mighty Bow Bell began to ring matins in Cheapside, Marlowe threw his pen down on the barrel-head and leaped to his feet. "All done!"

"Wow," said Will. He looked down at the manuscript. "Really?"

Marlowe blotted the top page, put the pages back in order and handed them to Will. "Take that to Lord Strange's Men," he said. "Just remind them how much they owe me."

Will stared at the sheaf of papers in his hands. At his fastest, he could write perhaps a single scene in one night. Marlowe, evidently, had expanded and revised an entire play in that time, in the midst of a raucous party and with enough drink in him to pickle a hog. "So what did you do to it? Dare I ask?" 

"You'll find out," said Marlowe, yawning and slinging his arm around Willy's shoulders. "Now I'm off to bed. Let me know what Kempe and Burbage and those other idiots think."

Will took the manuscript home. Struck by an uncharitable suspicion, he read it through to make sure Marlowe hadn't inserted the adventures of Friar Bacon into his War of the Roses. But he had not. The play was…better. Good, even. Amazed, Will took it to Burbage and told him to have Marlowe paid for three acts. 

Some weeks later, he realized that he might easily have claimed the work as his own and never let Marlowe see a penny for it. 

 

Fresh and glowing in a satin gown and a blond periwig, Willy Hughes skipped over to lean against Will, who was removing the more cumbersome components of his outlaw costume. As Willy approached, Will felt that strange pain in his chest Willy always inspired in him, as well as that familiar tightness in his hose when the boy happened to be wearing a dress.

Covering these feelings with a cough, he said, "Well done, as usual. Though I do fear the day when you must resort to a falsetto."

"Perhaps you'll let me play Valentine then."

"Or perhaps you'll consent to act in proper plays once more," said a voice to their left, "and not these godforsaken bum-buggering comedies."

"I like the comedies," protested Willy.

"Yes, because they're full of androgynous, empty-headed teenagers like you. Seriously, Shags, could these pairs of lovers be any more interchangeable? I couldn't even keep their names straight. And their attraction to each other is so arbitrary they may as well have drunk love potions."

Will folded his arms. "I'll have you know I'm writing a 'proper' play with a properly tragic part for Willy right now," he said. 

"Oh!" said Willy, hopping in place. "What is it?"

"You're to be a great Roman lady," said Will, which got him a huge beaming smile. "Who is ravished and has her tongue cut out."

Willy's face fell. "That's a rotten way to solve the falsetto problem," he muttered.

"Shags," said Marlowe, putting a concerned arm around his shoulders, "we need to talk about this fixation on rape you're developing…"

"My dear!" came a shout from the street. "My darling, I must speak to you!"

They turned to see an elderly gentleman in a velvet cloak approaching. He was homing in on Willy, who had frozen in a stance of flight like a rabbit watching an owl descend from the sky. 

The gentleman stopped a few feet short of them. "A magnificent performance," he said, bowing repeatedly. "I was most moved. You have no idea the _ways_ I was moved!" Will stifled a laugh as Marlowe muttered something his ear about old people's bowels, but the fellow didn't hear. "I must say," he went on, "when the young man in the forest nearly gave in to his frustrations and offered to take you by force, I felt every sympathy for him!"

Will, Marlowe and Willy all cringed in unison. "Um, thanks," said Willy awkwardly.

"It's funny you should say that," said Marlowe, shaking off his rictus of horror and taking the old gentleman by the arm. "Because my friend here has recently conceived this notion that there's nothing so romantic as rape—"

Will elbowed him in the back. "That was _you_ , you maniac, if you'll recall the rather violent courtship of Zenocrate—"

"Ah, the beauteous Oriental captive!" cried the old man. "I remember now—this delicate creature plays her as well! Do you not, my dear?"

"Er, yeah," said Willy, looking to Will and Marlowe for assistance. 

"'Delicate' may be a slight exaggeration," laughed Marlowe. "If you could hear him while he's—"

"But she _is_ ," said the old man, bowing so low the plume in his cap brushed the ground. "The _most_ delicate."

In the ensuing shocked silence, Marlowe leaned over and muttered to Will in his most theatrical whisper: "Don't look now, but I believe he thinks Willy's a _girl_."

"Yes," Will muttered back. "I got that."

"My dear sir!" Marlowe opened his arms. "My dear, foreign—is that a Dutch accent I'm detecting?—wealthy, generous sir! I can see you admire my sister."

"This nymph is your sister?" The old man bowed anxiously several times. "I hope my forwardness gave you no offense!"

"Of course it didn't. How could we refuse the attentions of—you know, I don't believe we got your name."

"Engelbrecht! I am Joost Engelbrecht of Antwerp."

"Indeed—the attentions of a man from such a prominent family as the Antwerp Engelbrechts. Or would that be Engelbrechten? My sister would be _delighted_ to see more of you. So, when shall we bring her to you?"

The old man's face turned radiant with lecherous excitement. "I—I—immediately, if it pleases you! I—I could take a room upstairs!"

"Master!" cried Willy in dismay.

Marlowe's brow grew stormy. "Why, your honor, I hope you didn't just suggest a carnal assignation? This is my darling sister, for heaven's sake—what kind of man do you take me for? What I _meant_ was, _when should we come to dinner?_ "

"Oh lord—" The man crossed himself. "Of course I meant to imply no such thing—please forgive me—tomorrow? Would that be too soon?"

"Not at all," said Marlowe with a smile of infinite grace. "Just send us the address and we'll bring her straight there!"

The man bowed one last time, mopping sweat from his face. "Might I enquire after your names?"

"Certainly," said Marlowe. "This of course is my sister, er, Margery, while that there—" he nodded to Will— "is Willy Hughes, and _my_ name is Will Shakspere."

Once the old man was gone, Marlowe looked solemnly at Will and nodded. Then they dissolved into gales of laughter. 

Willy joined in with less enthusiasm. "I hope you don't mean to push this joke to its natural conclusion, sir," he said.

"Oh no," said Marlowe, "I won't let him lay a hand on you. Unless you're up for it."

"Wait," said Will, sobering. "You mean we're actually _going_ to dinner tomorrow?"

"Of course!" Marlowe laughed. 

"But _why?_ What's to be gained?"

"At the very least, dinner!" Marlowe held his stomach. "I've exhausted my credit in every tavern from here to Cripplegate."

"And why did you have to borrow _my_ name?"

"I never defraud anyone under my own." Marlowe grew serious. "Look, lads," he told them, "this fine Dutch herring buss is positively stuffed with money. If we shake him just right, we might get some of it to fall our way."

Will shook his head. "Careful, Marlowe—if you don't watch out, somebody might write a play about _you_ some day."

 

They dressed Willy in a handsome lady's costume—which happened to be that of Julia, since he'd played Silvia the day before.

"Perfect," said Marlowe, turning him to and fro. "Almost. Shags, stuff another bit of lint down that bodice. We don't want to present the old fellow with a flat-chested nymph."

"Don't overdo it," Willy protested, holding his arms out while Will stuffed. "I've not exactly got cleavage."

"Hm, I see what you mean." Marlowe frowned. "We'll throw a bit of lawn over you. He'll never get close enough to see down the front—and if he does, you can knock him one in the stones."

Mr. Engelbrecht lived in a large townhouse near the Royal Exchange. He spent far too long for Will's comfort kissing Willy's hand, while in the background, Marlowe played the overawed chaperone ostentatiously admiring every frill and trinket in the house. Or maybe he wasn't acting at all, but rather deciding which items from Engelbrecht's household to pocket. Surely he wouldn't _really_ —but with Marlowe, you could never say for certain that he wouldn't, really.

At dinner, Engelbrecht rained questions down upon "Margery"—did she sing and dance as well? where did she go for her gowns? had she ever seen an elephant?—but Willy ignored him. A new affection had captured his heart: that is, a dinner like nothing he'd ever seen on New Fish Street or anywhere else, no doubt. Engelbrecht watched in amazement as his darling stuffed herself with enough food for three men, barely pausing to breathe and only uttering the occasional one-word reply through a mouthful.

Will did his best to make conversation and soothe the old man's disappointment at his sweetheart's coyness—but he too was hungry. Soon the dining room was silent except for the sound of voracious chewing. 

In the final course, Will and Willy reached their limits. But their states were nothing compared to Marlowe, who had eaten so much by now that he'd broken out in a red-faced sweat. His doublet fit so tightly that Will could see gaps between the buttons—which he hadn't even know could really happen, thinking it a phenomenon confined to insults and hyperbole. Crossing his eyes, Marlowe belched a deep, round, resonant belch that seemed to lift him out of his seat, and slapped his hand down on the table just as the servants were entering to clear away the course.

"Could you spot a counterfeit if it were staring you in the face, Mr. Engelbrecht?" he asked.

Will exchanged a nervous glance with Willy. 

"Oh, I should think so!" said Engelbrecht. "I didn't make my fortune by being taken advantage of!"

Marlowe lifted his hand to reveal a coin. "We men of the theater," he said, "we men of the _stage_ , you see, make our living selling counterfeits."

"But few are foolish enough to take them for truths!" said Engelbrecht, picking up the coin. "I say, what's this?"

"Take a careful look," said Marlowe, leaning back as a footman cleared away the wreckage of his dinner.

Engelbrecht held the coin up to his face, and Will bent forward to get a look as well. It seemed to be a Dutch shilling—except that it was the wrong color.

Fear lit a spark in his breast. He'd heard of counterfeiters striking coins in pewter, obviously fake, not tradeable and thus not prosecutable, but highly effective as advertisements of their art. Proper counterfeiting was petty treason, a capital crime, and possessing such a coin as this was not unlike fashioning a rag doll dressed as the Queen and stabbing it repeatedly. Why the devil would Marlowe keep such a thing on his person?

"This is most cunning," murmured Engelbrecht, turning the coin around in his fingers. "And most wicked. Explain yourself, Shaxbere!" 

Marlowe stifled a smile. Then he burst out in a laugh. After a moment of wheezing, he said, "Stage money."

"What?" said Engelbrecht and Will together.

"Props for the stage," Marlowe went on. "We've whole sacks of them backstage at the Rose."

Engelbrecht broke into a relieved smile. "No doubt you thought you had me going!" he laughed. "But I knew all along it was something to do with your theatrical tricks. See?" He held up the coin. "How could this dull gray thing ever hope to fool anybody?"

"The theater makes no claims to truth nor any true attempts to deceive," Marlowe nodded. "And so any man who says it does must admit he was foolish enough to _be_ deceived."

"True, true," said Engelbrecht, putting the coin in his pocket.

"Er, I'll have that back, if you don't mind," said Marlowe, holding out his hand. "They might be fake, but that doesn't stop the manager from counting them all every night."

Engelbrecht stared at his solemn visage until they both burst into laughter. After a few hoots, Marlowe turned solemn again. "No, really, I do need that back."

Sourly, Engelbrecht handed over the coin. "Young people—so stingy with their money nowadays."

Marlowe stowed the coin in a breast pocket. "Just making up for our elders' profligacy! Which brings me to the matter at hand—haha, hand, I say!—which is to say, what sort of offer you're going to make for my sister's hand."

"Offer…?" Engelbrecht paled. "But the lady and I are only just getting to know one another…"

"Yes, well," said Marlowe briskly, "that's all very sweet, but we've got many other offers on the table, so I'm afraid you'll have to commit. You see, our father drank away poor Margery's portion so it's you who will have to front the cash. As you can see, my sister's a pearl of great price and we can't just _give_ her away."

"Why—I've never heard of such a thing—!"

"I know, it's a bit strange, but all the old customs are upside down these days—and not to be rude, but you _are_ in England now."

Engelbrecht put his head in his hands, genuinely flustered. "I must have time to think about this…"

"No problem," said Marlowe. "But just so you know, I'm not letting her go for less than three hundred pounds. With a payment up front of fifty at least."

"Fifty!" Engelbrecht lifted his head. "I could give you—thirty, perhaps."

"Hm…it's not exactly what I'd hoped for." Marlowe furrowed his brow. "But I'll consider it. If you'll excuse me, I must consult with my sister on the matter of her choice." Hoisting Willy out of his chair by the arm, Marlowe fled the scene, leaving Will alone in the company of the good Mr. Engelbrecht.

The old man buried his face in his arms. Despite a residual desire to laugh, Will felt a stab of pity for him. Muffled by his arm, Engelbrecht moaned, "Mr. Hughes, have you much experience in love?"

"Well…" Did writing about it count? How about reading about it? "Not very much _successful_ experience," Will admitted, thinking for a painful moment of Willy, and, a few steps farther back in the shallow mists of time, his wife.

"It's enough trouble just catching the eyes of these bewitching creatures," Engelbrecht sighed miserably, lifting his head. "I thought that's where it would end. But no one ever tells you how _expensive_ women are!"

"Well," said Will, stifling a smile, "a bit of spending _is_ unavoidable in love."

Engelbrecht glared at him. "A pun! For shame. You're a poet, aren't you? To think I've sunk so low as to be punned at by poets." Then he began to weep.

Will slumped unhappily in his chair. "Sorry. Wordplay is my one and only skill, really." He passed Engelbrecht his handkerchief. 

Engelbrecht dabbed his eyes and then blew his nose. "It's a terrible choice," he said, gazing thoughtfully into the handkerchief. "Must I give up the comfort of my fortune for that of a warm breast and a pair of snowy arms?"

Will was growing deeply uneasy about this adventure. Unlike Marlowe's, his cruel streak didn't go all that deep. "You know," he said, "historically, these May-December matches don't work out so well. It's the jealousy, you see."

Engelbrecht sighed. "I'm sure such a delectable young thing would plant horns on my head before we made it home from the chapel. But at my age, all one really wants is a not-too-hideous face to greet you in the morning and a warm embrace to keep the chill out of your bones at night."

Will was on his way to feeling positively awful now. His cohorts in the theater saved their bitterest satire for foolishness, but at bottom, Will was the sort of person who believed there were worse things to call a man than "stupid." Exposing the follies of harmless dimwits certainly seemed a shabby business when most of the world's suffering was caused by greed, jealousy, and lust for power. 

He couldn't deny, of course, that his _own_ heart was touched by jealousy, or that his imagination was painting many lurid reasons for Marlowe's and Willy's long absence. He'd committed the sin of mistrust, too, in wondering why Marlowe had left him alone just moments after making a virtual confession of counterfeiting under his name. No, Will's own heart was no purer than the next man's. 

The confluence of these thoughts produced the impulse that made him look Engelbrecht in the eye and say, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the lady whose hand you seek is _not_ the gentleman's sister." Engelbrecht's mouth fell open. "In fact, they're neither of them who they claim to be, I think you'll find. I'm so terribly sorry."

The old man leaped to his feet. In the space of a moment, rage had transformed him into something altogether different than the weeping miser he'd been just a second ago. He actually seemed _taller_ , and indeed rather stronger as he seized Will by the wrist and marched him from the room.

Will considered shouting ahead to Marlowe and Willy, but something stayed him—a sense that he'd committed himself to a side, perhaps, and not necessarily the right one. The old man's wounded love had gone down quickly in this tempest and Will wondered if he hadn't just put the three of them in real danger. He trotted after Engelbrecht through emtpy rooms and down corridors until they burst into the buttery, where Will crashed into the back of his host who'd stopped in his tracks. 

For a second, Will pictured Willy and Marlowe in a passionate embrace as he stepped out from behind the old man. Instead, he saw four servants gathered with Marlowe around a table, upon which were spread a handful of coins. Willy, off to the side, was adjusting the wadded lint down the front of his bodice.

Marlowe looked up. "Whoops," he said, sweeping the coins off the table into his pocket, "gotta go." He grabbed Will's arm in one hand and Willy's in the other, and tore from the room before anyone present had the chance to speak a word.

Will didn't dare look behind him. He just followed Marlowe, who seemed to have a plan, and concentrated on keeping up. Willy had the most trouble in his little slippers and capacious skirts, so Will did his best to help him along and keep his clothes from catching on things. Once they burst out onto Lothbury Street, there were no more impediments, and the three of them let go of each other's hands and booked it for Bishopsgate.

In the liberties beyond the city wall, they crouched beside a stall to catch their breath. Gasping, Will said, "I assume those were counterfeit coins you were showing the gentleman's servants?"

"Yep," said Marlowe.

"And when our host reports this counterfeiter who attempted to defraud him of thirty pounds, he'll be giving them my name?"

"Probably," said Marlowe.

Will's heart clenched. "Care to explain what this was all about?" he asked. 

"Nope," said Marlowe.

Will nodded, cold all over with fury and grief. He supposed there wasn't much else to say.

 

Will paced his rooms for days, wondering if he should bother fleeing the city or if he might as well endure the inevitable arrest sooner rather than later. The truth was, he _couldn't_ leave London, not now that he'd made his home and his career here. Nothing else compared. No other life would suit him. And if he wound up in prison—well, he might just have time to finish _The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus_ before they strung him up at Tyburn.

The clever thing to do would be to give them Marlowe's name—Marlowe, who'd taken such care to keep his own name out of their caper. Marlowe, who had permission to wear a velvet doublet for reasons no-one knew and who kept a pocket full of counterfeit money as if daring the authorities to pick him up. No, that probably wouldn't help. Whatever Marlowe was mixed up in, he would undoubtedly lead Will straight from the frying pan into the fire. Though maybe at least they'd burn together.

More days passed with no justice of the peace knocking on his door. Still paranoid but gradually recovering his wits, Will went back to writing. He finished _Titus_ , feeling a bit nauseated, and then wrote a poem to cleanse his palate. On the ninth or tenth day, Willy turned up.

"My master invites you to dinner at the Mermaid," he said, his face void of all but servile solicitiousness. 

"Tell him I'm busy," said Will sharply, and turned back to his desk. His quill paused. "You, er, don't appear to be arrested," he offered. 

"No, sir. It seems we got off clean."

"No thanks to your master," Will muttered. 

Willy said nothing.

Will spun around in his chair. "How do you endure him?" he shouted. 

"I know how he seems, sir," said Willy. "But how he seems is not what he is, not truly."

"What—he's not completely self-absorbed? Not reckless with his friends' lives? We're all just a bit of sport to him, Willy—just purses to be upended and shaken, or spectacles to be made. We're just grist for the mill of the Marlovian legend, just fodder for more drunken tales. Your master's as loud and hollow as a kettledrum!"

"With all due respect, sir," said Willy, "you haven't known him all that long."

"Oh but I have," said Will nastily. "I've heard his plays. And you know what? They're nothing but noisy hymns to cruelty and violence."

"I really can't say," said Willy. "I'm just an actor, and not much of one at that."

"You're a fine actor," said Will, softening. "Finer than any part _he's_ ever written can show. I intend to write you such parts—forget that Roman maiden with no tongue, I've got you in mind for the barbarian queen instead, and that's nothing compared to what I mean to write once I—"

"Thank you, sir," said Willy with a small bow, "I don't doubt that you will. But I've got to get back to him now."

Will watched him go with a pang in his breast. Having never tried righteous anger before, he'd expected to enjoy it more. On the stage, it looked so satisfying.

 

He saw Marlowe from time to time in the following months. Always, the man was drinking, fighting, and raising one kind of hell or other, but with more desperation now, as if, like Doctor Faustus, he made merry to fend off despair. And like Faustus, his merriment seemed to have an expiration date. No man could keep up such a lifestyle for long.

Still, the devil came to collect far sooner than even Will had expected. On a morning at the very end of May, he heard the story just outside his front door: Marlowe had sat down to supper in a tavern in Deptford, and got up from the table with a knife through his head.

Through his _head_ —it curdled the blood just to think of it. Right above the eye, straight through to his brain…Will fixated on the brutal details as the story circulated, trying to root himself in the reality of his friend's last minutes as conjectures accumulated and the tale grew more and more fabulous. Alone in his rooms, he sobbed into his arm and wished he'd had the ridiculously simple foresight to know he'd regret not making peace with Marlowe before it was too late.

Willy turned up again. "I'm out in the street," he announced. "The Admiral's Men can't afford to keep me on with the plague shutting everything down, and they say my voice will be undone by the time the theaters reopen."

"We'll just have to find you some young men's parts, then," Will smiled. "There's talk of a new company forming, under the Lord Chamberlain's patronage. I'll bring you with me if it happens."

Willy smiled gratefully and gave Will a hug. Will shut his eyes and held him tight, but the embrace ended quickly, and when Willy pulled away, his face had grown sad again. "So," he said, shifting nervously on his feet. "I suppose I can tell you now what those coins were all about."

Will's heart gave an unpleasant leap.

"It's an old secret service trick," Willy explained. "Papist plotters, as I understand it, always need money, real or fake, so nothing draws them out of the woodwork like a counterfeit coin. That's what Mr. Marlowe was up to that day. He thought he'd stumbled on a nest of Papists in the old man's house."

Will blinked. "Wait a moment—the secret service?"

"Yeah—he's done their business for a decade or so, you see. But lately the jobs had all dried up, and he's been out of money for months now. Accustomed to living in a certain manner, my master, and so he was hoping to get back in—to bring the spymasters something to show he could still be of some use to them."

"And I blundered in just as he was about to seal the deal, no doubt." Will sighed. 

"It was stupid of him," said Willy angrily. "He tried the same trick before, in Zeeland, and almost got himself hanged. That's why he used your name—because any secret Dutch Papist with half a brain knows his by now."

"And the reason we didn't all get arrested?"

"He took his story to his old masters. They didn't think much of it—but they agreed to keep the law off our backs."

Will thought for a moment. "So all the nonsense—the fighting and the blasphemy and the naked Latin poetry—what was _that_ for?"

"Oh, you've got to reckon _some_ of that was him. But he used to say, 'If you want to avoid being suspected of a crime, admit to a worse one.' Who'd imagine you were spying for the Queen when you're yammering on about Jesus buggering his disciples?"

"True," said Will. He sat still and quiet for a long time. Then he shook his head. "I almost wish you hadn't told me all of this."

"Why?" Willy sniffed and wiped at a tear. "It'd be nice if someone else besides me knew the truth—that he pretended to be _worse_ than he was. It's a terrible thing, Mr. Shakespear, keeping secrets and playing a part for so long."

"You're right," said Will, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "it is. I don't think I really…got that, before."

"Bit funny that we work in the theater, then, isn't it."

"Funny. Yes." Will sighed. "Your master didn't think much of comedy. I suppose he had trouble imagining that redemption might be as easy as all that."

"It can be, though." Willy sat and laid his head on Will's knee. "Just a matter of putting your hands together and asking for it."

"Oh, I don't know...I dare say there's nothing harder," said Will. "Else _I'd_ have done it months ago."

Willy gazed up at him with understanding. "Even though you still thought he'd betrayed you?"

Will nodded. "Even though I still thought he'd betrayed me." 

He offered a few more silent prayers for forgiveness. Still he found he wasn't quite ready to let Marlowe go. That evening, with Willy curled up in the corner trying to get the stains out of his best doublet, he opened his copies of Plutarch and Holinshed, chroniclers of great and terrible men. He'd write one last doozy in Marlowe's honor—a real Marlovian hellspawn of a hero, whose footsteps would echo like the fiend storming heaven's ramparts—then sing the fellow to sleep, and do his best to move on to something new. 

On a sudden inspiration, he dug out the manuscript of _Henry the Sixth_ that Marlowe had finished for him. Scanning the _dramatis personae_ , his eyes stopped at one of the names: Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Ah yes. Perfect.  


FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> "William Hughes," possible dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, is only speculated to have existed, but there are a number of theories about who he might have been if he did. According to Wikipedia, which cites the _New Variorum Shakespeare_ : "An article in the _Times Literary Supplement_ in 1938 argued that there was an apprentice shoemaker by that name who was employed by Christopher Marlowe's father, and may have travelled to London with Marlowe to become an actor, meeting Shakespeare there." That's the (incredibly insubstantial) theory I went with.
> 
> Title of story is from the motto on the one purported likeness of Christopher Marlowe that exists, found in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It means, "That which nourishes me destroys me."


End file.
